Broken Home
by Shinisin
Summary: Songfic to the song 'Broken Home' by Papa Roach. A quick Vegeta soliloquy.


Broken Home

Broken Home

** **

_I'd try to describe how sorry I am for being dead for the last few… months __(eep)… but I don't think the English language stretches that far. My excuse??? A/S levels. Finished them recently tho', so I should be able to get another chapter of solky out soon. Recently, I've been mulling over the idea of a Placebo fic… stay tuned for that. The POV and the time order jumps around in this. Stay on your toes. NE1 talking about, 'me' is Vegeta._

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragonball Z or any of the characters, and I don't own the song 'Broken Home'. The band Papa Roach does. I don't own any Pepsi either… well… not for more than 15 minutes NEway.

_/Broken home, all alone/_

_/Broken home, all alone/_

_ _

It was too late for regrets now. It was too late for anything now. He felt that the end had come, finally. He couldn't stop what was taking place. He was too weak. But at least he couldn't feel. That in itself was a blessing. He sat in the darkness, almost catatonic.

_/I can't seem to fight feelings/_

_ _

He didn't want to feel anything anymore. The cold, hard wall that had sprung up between him and the rest of the world couldn't seem to block the molten feelings of rejection and betrayal. They waged war within him.

_/I'm caught in the middle of this/_

_ _

It was his life- the life of one individual- against the lives of a whole planet. His people. There was little thought to be made over the decision… but it still hurt to be treated like property. He was still young, regardless of what he'd lived through, and he had harboured the thought that his father might actually still care for him… that he was important as his son as well as the Prince. He hated being wrong.

_/And my wounds are not healing/_

_ _

He could endure amounts of physical abuse that grown men could not, and yet the gouges made within him when his father looked at him as the downfall of their nation, as a disappointment… as if he was worthless… they wouldn't close.

_/I'm stuck in between my parents/_

_ _

Frieza has had so much influence in my upbringing that he is more my father than the King would be… but I will never, _never_ call him father. My real father has _some honour. He wouldn't enslave another race to do his dirty work. He'll gladly kill them of course, but slavery isn't the Saiyan way. The Ice-jin's, however, have become masters at it over the centuries. It is now them who teach me. He who controls me. I'm sorry father. I have failed you._

_/I wish had someone to talk to/_

_/Someone I could confide in/___

_ _

But I don't, even when others surround me, I have to be alone. I can't afford to trust anyone; there is no one to trust. Nobody has the time anymore, the time to listen or the time to become trustworthy. I have too many problems to sort through myself, so I'll keep them inside till later. There will be time later, I am sure. I'll forget that I've been taught that later never comes.

_/I just want to know the truth/_

_/I just want to know the truth/_

_/Want to know the truth/_

_ _

I think I'm old enough to take it. I even think I already know. Even Nappa could figure out that I'm not wanted round my father. Except for the fact that I'm probably the next Super-Saiyan, I would be dead by now and probably by his hand. I've always been too short, too clever, and too powerful for him. He's jealous. My own father, jealous of his son. So he hates me. And I hate him. Because... somewhere deep inside… I still love him. I'm betraying myself.

_/Broken home, all alone/_

_ _

Frieza now controls my father and practically owns the entire Saiyan race. And we remain as his _lackeys__!! I'd rather die before our race is enslaved… but my father is a coward. And he'd sell his son to preserve his honour. What is honourable about that?_

_/I know my mother loves me/_

_ _

It was the last thing before she died. I'd like to say that she died in battle, fighting against Frieza, as she had wanted to from the minute she had met him. I would prefer to remember her that way… instead of lying in front of my fathers feet, broken in her body and her soul. Another demand from Frieza. And I stood, ice-cold, and stared at her as she screamed her last words into his father's face, the words that would unknowingly be an omen. 'Your making a mistake Vegeta!'

_/But does my father even care/_

_ _

My father ignores me now, like he ignored her, and we don't talk anymore. I don't think I exist for him any longer. And now that my mother is dead… she can't touch me. She can't reassure me. She will never talk to me again. But I know she is watching.

One is here but doesn't want to be.

One isn't here but longs to.

I don't want to be here either.

_/If I'm sad or angry/_

_ _

I feel this way the most, in the rare moments when I feel anything. Angry. Mostly angry. I don't think the word does justice for the emotion that screams within me, the feeling that pours destructive from my hands, the perpetual throbbing of it in my head, controlling my actions. There can't be a word for the demolition of your senses that happens when you totally lose it, so strong that it almost makes your spirit leap from your body to get out, to rip, to kill. More vibrant than hate. More present than loathing. And it burns out quicker than the sadness that floods the space it leaves when it ebbs.

And somehow, the sadness is worse. At least the anger doesn't drain you so much. The anger doesn't make you weak. The sadness cripples you, and you can't escape from it. Ever present, it seeps into your bones like the cold and grows there, it centers in your gut and curling up does little to ease the feeling.

_ _

_/You were never ever there/_

_/When I needed you__/_

_ _

I suppose it's because you wanted me to be strong. But at those times when there was no one else, and when the problem was too large for me to handle on my own. I knew that the strong presence of my father would be right behind me… pushing me deeper into my troubles. There's only so much you can do to me to make me stronger, more emotionless. But my own imagination is a better teacher, the nightmares that I create within my own head deaden me inside more than anything you could do to me, and it is even more effective when your not there afterwards. You just don't care.

_/I hope you regret what you did/_

But I don't think you do. You once told me, when we used to talk, that you never regretted anything that you'd done. I wonder if that remains the same now as it did then. I doubt it. There are so many things now to regret than there were then… but you are the King and it immediately follows that what you do is right. 

Even if that thing is enslaving your own people to a megalomaniac rather than choosing to stand and fight. Even if it means that thousands of babies are sent off world to grow up in pods, to be brainwashed into completing the work of Frieza, so that they don't get a chance to try and become free themselves. So that for the next generation upon generation will always have worked for Frieza and will have grown up knowing nothing other than Frieza.

Even if it means sending your son, the hope for the next generation of Saiyan warriors, to be beaten and enslaved by the same creature who kills worlds with his little finger.

_/I think I know the truth/_

_/Your father did the same to you__/_

_/Did the same to you/_

_ _

It's the Saiyan way, really. Growing up emotionless and without feelings so that we are not hindered on the battlefield. Or am I wrong. I would normally deny it, but in this case I know that I am wrong. We _do feel on the field of battle. We feel honour and glory and bloodlust. The thrill of the adrenaline pounding through us as it was meant to. We feel the rush as we charge into the fray, knowing this could be our day to die, but __loving every minute of it. But now, we feel nothing. We are killing machines. Totally soulless. As your father had to be when he beat you mercilessly, as you do me, to teach you to be stronger, so that you could also gain power, and become as strong as you could be. But your father always fought his battles himself. He didn't give you over to ensure that he won. Did he._

He made a good job of making you soulless.

_ _

_/I'm crying day and night now/_

_/What is wrong with me? /_

_ _

I feel so weak and pathetic. I know that a Saiyan warrior should not feel this way, shouldn't feel anything, especially not to someone who they'd eventually have to kill. But then, my whole planet died. The world that I had been reared into the… the mindset that I had been brought up in and the whole reason for my existence in the first place had just been erased by a large lump of ice and rock. I didn't find out until later that Frieza had done it himself. How was I supposed to feel?

But that didn't explain the constant weeping, the times when I had looked into the mirror only to find myself crying silent tears, unknown even to myself. I had been lucky so far, and no one else had noticed, but I was sure that I wasn't supposed to be behaving like this. I was supposed to be emotionless, in almost any state, my subconscious being one of them. So how, then, was it that I was constantly crying, why did I wake up to the salt-water brimming in my eyes, and why didn't I know that I was crying as I did it?

_/I cannot fight now/_

_/I feel like a weak link/_

_ _

Fighting is impossible. My power level hasn't increased by as much as one point in the last few days that I have been on Frieza's ship, when it would normally be increasing by at least five points by now. I had never gone without training for so long. I only noticed it when I got into a fight the other day and woke up this morning sore. 

I just feel so… _drained. How can I hope to beat others when I feel beaten to my soul inside myself? It's not possible for me anymore. I'm just losing track of who I am and what I am. And I can't stop myself from going that way. I feel helpless and I __hate it!_

_/Crying day and night now/_

_/What is wrong with me? /_

_/I cannot fight now/_

_/I feel like a weak link/_

_ _

I'm slowly losing my sanity. Piece by piece, losing my mind, it feels like it's just dripping slowly out of my skull. Every time I bleed, I lose a little bit more; it's like I'm losing it with my blood. Drip. Drip. Drip. Slowly dripping down, trickling, running down my arm, my legs, all the little crimson drops trying to make their way onto the floor, where my sanity and my pride lie in shattered pieces.

In some ways this is a good thing, because for every bit of my blood, my sanity lost, my _hate for Frieza grows stronger. The loss of these things only serves to feed the hate that is growing within me, day by day. Making room for its icy coldness by pushing out the remains of my humanity, my sanity, but most of all my pride. The pride that in turn took over the parts of my soul meant for the things that normal children carry in them. Innocence, wonder, the capacity to see the good in people. Reflexes that aren't above the normal level for a tiger! Some children actually had the chance to trust people; some children hadn't soaked their hands in more blood to fill their own bodies by the time they were three._

But I shouldn't think about the past like that.

I shouldn't think about the past or the future, I live for the present, otherwise I get depressed. On those too long away missions on my own with nothing to do, when it would be so easy to take the coward's way out and make it look as if I died in an accident. I can't fight when I feel like that. I think that I'm trying to die subconsciously, I find myself letting in blows that I easily could have blocked, letting my defenses down at crucial times.

I'm defeating myself. I can't be strong outside unless I feel strong inside. That was the reason for the intense training I was put through as a child. So, I'm weak inside and I'm weak outside, and as much as I try, I can't pull myself out of this slump.

_/A weak link/_

_ _

I sometimes think I wasn't worth enough for Frieza to have held me hostage. It's terribly ironic that the Prince of a planet is that planet's downfall, and it's worse that their Prince has become one of the best warrior's for he who blew it up in the first place. It's a good thing I don't have a religion anymore, or I might think that someone up there is having a joke at my expense.

_/It feels bad to be alone/_

_ _

It feels worse to know that you'll be isolated forever, because now you've been trained to stay solitary, to keep other people as far as far away from you emotionally as possible. Emotions are a liability. I learnt this under my father and I am reminded of it every day under Frieza, when I see the grief on the faces of those who are left behind when all their families have gone. I myself have been the tool of their grief more times than I can count, and more times than I care to remember.

Now, even when people surround me, I am still alone. Believing in trust is like believing in luck. Relying on something that isn't there instead of making your own destiny. 

Alone.

_ _

_/Crying by yourself/_

_/Living in a broken home/_

_ _

I've stopped the emotionless crying that I used to do, I've conquered my body and it reacts to my will. In the same way that I conquer planets… destroy anyone who complains and anyone who tries to fight back and then hand the whole thing over to Frieza who has taught me everything I know. Like my father. Or my father was like him, both are correct. At least I was the Prince of a planet when my father was my family. Here, I rule over all of two Saiyans. Any others who are out there have probably been executed by now. Our race made many enemies throughout space, and without the stronghold of Vejiitasei to come back to what hope do they have?

To say this was a broken home would be an understatement. All of Frieza's soldiers look out for themselves, except a rare few who form groups and survive by working better together than apart. If Frieza is a father figure, then he doesn't like his 'children' to get along. Here, unity is a weakness.

_ _

_/How can I tell it/_

_/So all y'all could feel it? /_

_ _

The barbarity of the way in which we live is unimaginable. We're all desensitized to everything around us, we have no objective in life except to keep following orders and surviving, apart from the desperate few who would rather die than live in this _hell for a moment longer. It isn't living it's surviving, and the handful of us who are strong enough to survive for more than a year or two lose all hope of ever getting out from under the hand of that tyrant. _

You can't feel empathy unless you've been here, and that's something I wouldn't even wish on my father.

_ _

_/Depression strikes hard/_

_/Just like my old earth would tell it/_

_ _

The down pull of the oppressive environment, with its sneaks, its liars, its cruel punishments and the constant state of mistrust that you have to live in creates a mood over you so black that light would be sucked into it and converted. The screams of the inhabitants of the planets that I've destroyed, as well as the lives of their families, their friends- their _children- weighs itself on my soul, and I'm feeling things that no one my age should. If I didn't have a duty to my few people, if I wasn't too proud to do it and if I didn't have to get my revenge on that bastardization of the meaning of the word 'prince', the slimy lizard who is the cause of all this, I would have killed myself years ago._

This lust for death only happened on my planet when a bonded mate was left without their partner- I understand how that feels now that I've lost my whole birthright.

_ _

_/To me, her son, she told me I'm the one/_

_ _

My mother used to tell me, when I was an infant, that I would grow up to be the next Super-Saiyan, the first for many years, as I was born with an abnormally high power level. It was this prophesizing that led to Frieza showing any interest in me in the first place. I have to become a super-Saiyan for the sole reason of mutilating, torturing and battering into the earth he who I have worked for all this time, who is afraid of me, who was so afraid of me that he blew up my whole race. Too bad for him that my mind was made up and my determination set the minute I figured out what he had done.

So I train to honour my mother, fulfill my destiny and stop the scourge that is Frieza before I begin to bore him and he decides to kill me.

_ _

_/Pain bottled up bout to blow like a gun/_

_ _

I wasn't extroverted as a child. Now, I can't help but show the only emotion that I have left running through my veins. It's apparent in my scowl, in the way I hold myself, in the unconsciously defensive crossing of my arms. Even in my smirk, the nearest I'll ever get to a smile. It's audible in the tone of my voice. I am blisteringly, incoherently, explosively angry. All I need is a single excuse, looking at me the wrong way, bumping into me, and anyone with a lower power level is dead, anyone with a higher power level gets a good workout. I can never let it go. If I did, I'd be hollow inside. I'm not even sure if that sadness that I used to feel so keenly is there anymore, it's been so long since I stopped being angry long enough for it settle in.

_ _

_/Stories that I tell, are non-fiction/_

_/And you can't take it back coz' its already done/_

_ _

The things that I have done in my life, the planets I have cleared, the populations that I've destroyed, seems like fantasy even to me. Dead worlds and dead languages that no one remembers, creatures that could have come out of dreams. But they were there once, I know because I stopped them.

There's no one left to re-populate, no one left to revive dead languages. I make sure that I kill everyone that I find, when it's possible. I can't take seeing any more accusing faces, and I don't want any one else to end up like me, the hollow mess of anger that I have become.

_/Broken home/_

_/Broken home/_

_ _

I want somewhere to belong. I need to be grounded somewhere. I feel like I'm floating along through this wretched existence. 

I need a purpose other than the one I have now. 

What will I have after I kill him?

_ _

_/Can't seem to fight these feelings/_

_/Caught in the middle of this/_

_/And my wounds are not healing/_

_/Stuck in between my parents/_

_ _

I can't decide whether to keep living or to die. I don't know how I feel about either one. I decided that it was too painful to let my feelings out, so I put them in isolation inside myself. It's worth not feeling anything rather than being hurt again. I can't heal those wounds where my feelings are, but at least I won't have more wounds after this.

Radditz tells me he may have found another Saiyan. I'll now have a race of three. Gaining one is better than losing one I suppose, but I also know that this particular Saiyan is a third-class, so he won't be much good for anything except cannon fodder.

_ _

_/Broken home/_

_/Broken home/___

_ _

But at least I can get away from here.

Was it awful? And I know you hate me for not posting anymore of solky. See above. This was my first songfic, and tho' I don't read that many myself I don't think I'll be posting another one anytime soon. Keep your eyes peeled for the Placebo fic.

Later, Assassin


End file.
